Shia LaBeouf is Catholic now, apparently

Sorry this edition is a bit later than usual. I don’t have much of a personal update for you, except to encourage you to send a link to this newsletter to a friend. I recently cleared 250 subscribers, which I’m really thrilled about, and I’d love to keep connecting with people who are also into the interesting and bizarre intersections between religion, internet and pop culture.

Also please join the Modern Relics Discord — it’s not overwhelming but there’s usually a fun discussion each week that expands on what’s been covered here. Also it’s a good place to share your niche memes and religious ephemera with people who will love it.

No religion roundup this week because I wasn’t properly paying attention, whoops. Except for, Mikhail Gorbachev and JP II: peace guys.

You can share news links in Discord though just saying.

Shia LaBeouf has really converted to Catholicism, apparently

Shia LaBeouf might have actually converted to Catholicism while on set of the Padre Pio movie.

I mean, who knows, because as I said like a year ago, he’s really into method acting, but he had an in-depth conversation on a podcast with Bishop Robert Barron, who does a lot of evangelistic Catholic media and has a high profile.

According to Jim McDermott in America Magazine:

…[Shia LaBeouf] and Bishop Barron also talk about suffering, shame and the unexpected ways that God works in one’s life. And much of their back and forth has the kind of free-wheeling curiosity and openness about spirituality that you can very occasionally find on a TV show like “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” …

But as Jim points out, Bishop Barron didn’t address the accusations that LaBeouf has been accused by multiple women of abuse and harassment, which Jim finds “difficult to watch” and “hard to understand”. LaBeouf has denied the allegations, but has subsequently spoken about them in the media more directly.

Anyway, Shia LaBeouf is really into the Traditional Latin Mass, and the head of the Vatican’s liturgy office says he wants to talk. I guess even the Catholic Church loves a celebrity convert. Memory check: Pope Francis has limited the celebration of the TLM because he says it’s being exploited for divisive and ideological reasons.

While on the subject of the Latin Mass, and only tangential to all of this, I’m delighted every day that Zac Mabry, the actor who played Porky in The Little Rascals, is now a Catholic accountant who is a big TLM fan and tweets about it a lot.

Jewish VMAs red carpet review

Shoshana, who I wrote about last week, continues to deliver with a Jewish VMAs red carpet thread.

Real Housewives of Salt Lake City Season 3

I’m going to level with you: I’ve never seen #RHOSLC. If you have, and you have some ~thoughts~ about the religious themes in it you’d like to share (because I know there are many!) I would like you to please let me know.

“Jesus vs Prophet Muhammad vs Andrew Tate”

Everyone’s been talking about Andrew Tate, former kickboxer, Big Brother contestant and proprietor of “Hustler’s University” who describes himself as “absolutely sexist and … absolutely a misogynist.”

If you’re a straight male, you’ve probably had Andrew Tate’s videos pushed to the top of your social feeds, meaning lots of people in the world have been looking up who Andrew Tate is.

Here’s how he’s recently compared to Jesus and Muhammad on Google. I haven’t had time to double-check this infographic based on Google Trends, but it looks like “everyone” is most of the “West” minus the USA plus Mongolia. Also New Zealand is Atlantis now.

Biden forgives some student debt, which is a Bible thing, actually

US President Joe Biden announced that most American student loan borrowers will be eligible for $10,000 of loan forgiveness, or $20,000 if they received a low-income grant.

Naturally, Republicans are ideologically furious. I’m not getting into the weeds of this, but I enjoyed a week of left-wing American Christians tweeting about how debt forgiveness is a major theme in the Jewish scriptures and the New Testament. From the season of Jubilee (debts cancelled, slaves freed) to the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard (a banger) and various theories of atonement (how Jesus “paid for our sins”).

Joe Biden is famously only the second Catholic president, and I’m not saying this is integralism, but I’m not-not saying that.

Danny DeVito as the Virgin Mary

You know when you get a notification on your phone and you take a look and it’s because your fiance has sent you a tweet containing several pictures of Danny DeVito as the Virgin Mary? A universally relatable experience.

The religious commentary of BioShock

My friend Mitto recently put me onto the video game commentary of Grace Benfell, a “queer Marxist, lapsed Mormon” games journalist.

I particularly enjoyed her recent analysis in GameSpot of the (sometimes muddled) religious themes in BioShock Infinite, which takes into account Mormonism and American Christian nationalism.

Best disciples

Finally, sleepovers